Haxhiu and Kryeziu file complaint with PZAP, seek vote recount

Candidates for parliament from the Democratic Party of Kosovo, Bekim Haxhiu and Qëndrim Kryeziu, have filed a complaint with the Electoral Complaints and Appeals Panel (PZAP) regarding the final result of the June 7 elections, announced by the Central Election Commission (KQZ).

Bekim Haxhiu, a parliamentary candidate from the Democratic Party of Kosovo, said that this result is inaccurate and, according to him, should not be accepted.

“Today, together with parliamentary candidate Qëndrim Kryeziu, we submitted a complaint to PZAP regarding the final result published by the CEC, because the published and final result is inaccurate, unverified, and has already been acknowledged and documented in two essential facts confirmed by the recount of 5,201 PDK votes, where 221 votes recorded incorrectly in the initial count were identified. As a candidate, in this recount I was awarded 6 additional votes, and the complaint is well-founded and the result cannot be certified as inaccurate; it must be accurate, the law guarantees that the final and certified result must be accurate.

According to Haxhiu, the complaint is based on two main arguments. The first, he said, is related to the fact that the recount of a small sample of 3.5% of PDK votes brought to light errors in the initial count at the Counting Center, a result which, according to him, is preliminary and cannot be treated as final without going through the verification process.

He added that the second argument concerns CEC meeting number 69, where, according to him, chairman Kreshnik Radoniqi admitted that the final result is inaccurate, calling them “minimal and human errors.” However, Haxhiu said this error amounts to 4.25% of the preferential votes for PDK candidates and that the law does not allow the certification of a result with errors.,” Haxhiu said.

He also stressed that a similar situation had occurred in the December 28 elections last year.

“Therefore, our complaint is based on facts now already known to the CEC, and we are asking PZAP not to allow the certification of an electoral result that is inaccurate. We are not seeking an extraordinary procedure; we are seeking a procedure provided for by law: a recount.

I remind you that in the December 28 elections, in the initial recount verified by the CEC on a 2% sample, during that period I was awarded 12 additional votes, while after the full recount I was awarded 522 additional votes. An almost similar case, though on a smaller scale, is happening now, given that the margin for winning the parliamentary mandate is very narrow, at 102 votes, while the margin of error that has been identified is very high and exceeds this vote difference. Therefore, for the result to be accurate and uncontested, we are asking for a recount procedure, which should be ordered by PZAP, and then to have the accurate final result,” Haxhiu said.

On the other hand, the other parliamentary candidate, Qëndrim Kryeziu, said that the law does not provide for forgiving errors, no matter how small they may be.

“But the law does not say that we should forgive them; the law says it must be applied equally to everyone and that every vote must be counted vote by vote. So we are not asking for anything extraordinary; we are only asking to thank those who voted for us and to have the accurate number of votes because it is known that there are more mistakes there than they say. So we are demanding our right for every vote to be counted and nothing more,” Kryeziu said.